The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program is a congressionally mandated effort to encourage and speed the development of new drugs for rare and neglected diseases. The federal budget for fiscal 2009 dedicated $24 million to establish this initiative. TRND will bridge the wide gap in time and resources that often exists between basic research and human testing of new drugs. The effort is grounded in, but aims to improve upon, existing processes for drug development in the pharmaceutical industry.